Your Roadmap to Your Best Year Yet

Do you ever stop and think about all the hats that you wear on an everyday basis? You are so much more than your job title. You may also be a parent, a spouse, your family’s nutritionist and meal planner, a cook, a housekeeper, a landscaper, a shopper, a business owner, a personal assistant to each of your children, a family therapist, the family bookkeeper, a coach, an athlete, a friend, a son or daughter, a caregiver for an aging or ill parent, an event planner, your own interior decorator, a travel agent, a party planner, a magic maker, and often a nurse.

When we take the time to see it this way, is it any wonder why we feel so overwhelmed? If all these people worked for a company, there would be a headquarters with a boss to manage each of these people and their job responsibilities. Your life and your home are every bit as important as a business and you should treat it as such.

“Run a home like you would a small business and treat it with the same seriousness.” – Anthea Turner

Create that Command Center in your home, devise procedures for tasks, establish a filing system, put your goals in writing, run meetings with family members, become a manager of your time, and don’t be afraid to delegate like a great boss would. Pick up a copy of The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People by Stephen Covey and hone your skills. Your life is your business. Run it well.

The biggest problem most people have isn't that they don't have organizational skills. It's that they don't know where to start. The process of organizing our lives is not a quick cleaning job or a one-and-done television show reveal. It is a procedure that involves planning and building from the inside-out. It takes a little thought and a little endurance.

“Organizing is what you do before you do something, so that when you do it, it is not all mixed up.” – A.A. Milne

Once the physical excess of the holidays is cleaned up and cleared out, we can sit down and think about what comes next.  What is it that you want for your new year? How does organization and happiness look to you? What bad habits do you need to overcome and which healthy brain connections do you need to learn? The inside-out process starts with some silence, a pad of paper, a planner, a calendar, and a tiny piece of real estate inside your home that can be dedicated to running the business of your family and your life. This space will serve as your Command Center or headquarters and when you sit down there you should have all the tools and information that you need to conduct business.

The reason I so strongly encourage a Command Center as the first building block of organizing your home is because it is the machine for of all the chaos that moves in and out of your house. Once this is up and running, you can focus on other areas of your home without losing important information or falling behind. You know that phenomenon in family life when you fix or organize something only to turn around and see that something else fell apart in the meantime? The Command Center helps us to fend off that feeling that we are a hamster running in a wheel and getting nowhere fast. For more information on setting up a Command Center you can read my earlier blog here or contact me for a personalized session on my website.

The second stop on your roadmap to a great year is proper planning of your time. In your Command Center you should have a dry erase calendar that can be easily updated and a planner that you can scribble and actually plan in. One of the greatest tools for personal time management is a weekly planner with time slots to break down your day. Clever Fox makes a great one that I would highly recommend.

Learning how to manage our time better is necessary for our own personal success. Doing this involves making to-do lists, prioritizing what's on the list, finding time slots in our week to make them possible, and then sticking to it. Do you want to fit in exercise three times a week? Use your calendar and planner to find the space that can accommodate this. Do you want to clean out that hall closet this week? Schedule it into your free morning. Have you been meaning to make a donation drop off? Will you be driving right by it on Thursday before soccer practice? Schedule yourself to pack the car up and leave ten minutes earlier so that you can get it done without an extra trip. Are there things you've been meaning to address with your kids? Schedule a family dinner this week during which you can capture their attention while they're all busy chewing. Have you been neglecting yourself and wonder what people mean by "self-care"? Pick an hour in your week and schedule nothing else there but YOU.

This scheduling and planning probably sounds like a very time-consuming activity and you're thinking to yourself that you just don't have the luxury of this time in your life, but being disorganized is actually the biggest time sucker that exists. The more things you schedule and accomplish, the more time and space you are freeing up for life. Without a plan, you might find a half hour of down time and tackle a couple of less effective tasks and then sit scrolling on your phone for fifteen minutes. If phone time is something you want and consider relaxing self-care, then schedule it in! But remember - that lost 30 or 60 minutes that was unplanned could have been spent sneaking in a quick workout and tending to the week's papers in your inbox to keep that Command Center going strong.

Sunday afternoons or evenings are often a great time for most people to sit in their Command Center with a cup of tea, make their lists, plan their week, tend to the papers that need attention, and know they will wake up feeling empowered and ready for the week to come.

Sunday Business

And by all means, never underestimate the power of lists in your life. I have several lists going at all times and while this sounds confusing, it's actually the best way to organize my thoughts. I have a list for my work, a list for my home, a list for my family, and a Master List of projects I want to accomplish. When it's time to work on one part of life without getting distracted by the others, a list with a big title and only things that pertain to that topic keep me focused. When planning your week, draw the most important items from each list and schedule them in like I talked about. Then put your lists away until next Sunday so you don't feel overwhelmed by them. You need only be working confidently from your plan during the week. You are in control just like a CEO would be.

So now you have yourself a Command Center where you handle the business of your life, you have lists to work off of, you have a planner to set your mission in motion, and you're ready to get to work. Without the worry of keeping your papers organized, knowing where important information can be found, or worrying about where you'll start, you are now in a place to begin organizing various parts of your house. Will it be the mudroom situation or lack thereof? Will it be the laundry room or the playroom? Does it need to be your kitchen? Congratulations, because you are finally ready to pick a project.

If you need help to get to this stage or to begin work on a project space in your home, please reach out to me or schedule a half hour consultation appointment that works for you on my website. Remember that Hot Mess is a state of mind, and Healing is only a few clicks away. Here's to your best year yet!